Dear Dean Manning, Assistant Dean Onken, & Dean Soban:
We are a group of current HLS students, dedicated to pursuing careers in public interest. We came to law school committed to careers working alongside and on behalf of marginalized and directly impacted communities.
Public interest careers are often regarded as noble work, requiring immense personal sacrifice. But these are also jobs, and we expect these jobs to allow us to make a living while making a difference. We have accepted the limits on lifestyle that come with salaries in the public interest arena even as the pay disparity between big law firm salaries and the average public interest salary grows increasingly wide. We do not ask that HLS shoulder the burden of changing this condition of public interest lawyering. We do, however, ask that HLS not continue to create additional financial barriers for its students pursuing work in public interest.
Unfortunately Harvard Law School, as a leader in the global legal community, does perpetuate inequity in its own support, or lack thereof, of public interest students, specifically through its insufficient funding for summer public interest internships through SPIF.
Currently, SPIF is anywhere from $3600 to $6875, depending on if a student is a 1L or 2L, whether a student is or is not on need-based financial aid, and how many weeks a student works during the summer. However, the award is typically $5500 for a student on need-based financial aid who works full-time for at least eight weeks out of a 14-week summer.
This amount is not nearly enough to cover basic living expenses anywhere in the United States, let alone the cities where many HLS students spend their summers. It is also far below the $8200 summer living allowance, the amount that HLS concedes is the bare minimum that an individual can live on during the summer. It is also less than the $3100 per month student living allowance during the academic school year.
In order to survive in the summers, students must borrow more money in the form of loans, rely on parents or other family members if possible, or even work second or third jobs in addition to their full-time internships. Some students may feel they cannot accept summer positions with organizations who cannot supplement the SPIF income, thus limiting their search. Financial constraints limit students’ access to reliable housing and other basic necessities. Constant financial insecurity undermines students’ ability to show up in formal, professional workplaces, such as courtrooms.
While we understand that most law schools provide no guaranteed funding to students who pursue non-paying law jobs or internships during the summer, we also argue that comparison to “most” other schools is not the standard to which HLS should hold itself. We expect HLS to be a leader amongst peer institutions by not only offering a generous summer funding relative to other schools, but offering a truly equitable summer funding program, one that gives students what we need and what we deserve.
HLS’s history of cutting public interest funding further demonstrates why comparison to its current program is the wrong metric. Since 2010, when HLS lowered its SPIF funding amount in response to the recession and in response to increased student interest, the award offered to 2L students receiving financial aid has not increased when adjusted for inflation in the last twelve years. Even as the school grows its wealth, it stagnates with regard to public interest student support.
On the other hand, law schools such as Yale and Northwestern currently offer their students more than $8000 of guaranteed grant funding for pursuing public interest summer jobs.
Furthermore, in addition to the low amount of grant funding, there are unfair procedural hurdles to participating in SPIF. Most egregious are the constant threats from the administration that students will be billed their entire SPIF award if we are unable to get a supervisor to sign off on all the hours we worked. This demoralizing and paternalistic action creates immense fear and anxiety amongst students. It further demonstrates HLS’s lack of support and even distrust and disdain for students who choose public interest work during the summer.
We acknowledge other student efforts to reform how HLS through its Student Financial Services assesses student summer contributions. Both that effort and ours are a critique of how HLS’s funding decisions operate under a false framework: one that assumes every student is white, upper class, single/childless, able-bodied, financially dependent on family, and carries no other financial responsibilities other than meeting their own bare subsistence.
Ultimately, what we are asking for is not simply more money in absolute terms, but really, more choice in what we do with our summers and what we do with our legal careers long-term. The privilege to have real choice about what we do with our law degrees is what attracted many of us to Harvard Law School. Especially for those of us pursuing public interest work, the value of our degrees is not the amount of money we can make after we graduate. It is the ability to do the work most meaningful to us, in communities most meaningful to us, without excessive debt and low-paying entry-level salaries forcing us to forgo the passions, interests, and commitment to social justice that brought us to law school in the first place.
While HLS is not totally responsible for the larger inequities that exist in the legal profession or in society as a whole, it plays a major role in perpetuating these inequities by creating consequences for its students’ long-term career decisions through its summer funding scheme. Summer internships are critical opportunities for students to explore their options and decide whether a public interest career is right for them. By making it so difficult for students to take public interest internships, HLS is further tipping the scales against public interest careers. Further, if students are disincentivized from taking summer positions they would otherwise accept if they had sufficient funding, then HLS has failed to provide its students with the full opportunity to network and build community in the legal landscapes they want to enter. For aspiring public interest lawyers, this is a serious impediment to our professional development.
Our demand is simple: Raise SPIF to $8500. This is one immediate action HLS can take to move in the right direction. This will put SPIF on par with peer institutions, match the student summer living allowance, bring more parity to public interest and firm internships, and give students more choice in how we spend our summers and how best to prepare for our future legal careers.
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We are still collecting signatures and testimony. Student voices are essential: please join us by adding your name, writing a statement of support, or sharing a story on why HLS should raise SPIF.
For the full list of signatories and to sign on, click here.